Time and Season
by LisaT
Summary: In the early hours of the morning following Shelagh's marriage to Dr Turner, Sister Julienne discovers Jenny Lee in chapel. They talk of ships and seals and sealing wax, of cabbages and kings. One-shot; please R&R. Slightly A/U, in that it ignores Jenny's potential new relationship.


_A/N: Hi all. This is my first fanfic in a while and my first in this fandom. One thing that annoys me slightly about the series is that so far we've not seen anything of the relationship that apparently existed between Jennifer Worth and the real Sister Julienne/Jocelyn. This story is one possible approach, within the confines of the TV series. All comments/concrit welcome!_

The nuns filed quietly out of chapel, their forms half-hidden by dawn's pale light. Sister Julienne took up the rear, as she often did, and glanced quickly at the bench near the door. The glance was a habitual one. The girls often crept in to listen to the Sisters' plainsong after a long night's work, the music replenishing their spirits before sleep refreshed their bodies.

This morning Sister Julienne did not expect to find anyone there. The young nurses should have been sound asleep in their beds after the merriment of the night before, when the entire community had come together to rejoice in the marriage of the _ci-devant_ Sister Bernadette and Poplar's Dr Turner. Even young Timothy Turner was permitted to stay up late, his sharp-boned face glowing with an open delight that Sister Julienne was certain he'd be careful to hide at any other time, in any other place. Why, then, was Nurse Lee huddled in one corner of the hard bench, her head resting on her knees as her wide skirts flowed around her?

A fine line deepened between the nun's brows.

'Nurse Lee?' Her voice was soft; the Great Silence had only just ended, and perhaps the girl had merely fallen asleep. It would not be the first time such a thing had happened.

A shudder ran through Nurse Lee's body, and Julienne's concern deepened. Jenny Lee was the most reserved of her charges, the girl who never openly voiced the questions the nun often saw in her eyes. She seated herself next to Jenny on the bench, one work-worn hand reaching out to touch the younger woman's shoulder. A tremor vibrated through her fingers.

'Nurse Lee?' No answer. 'Jenny? Whatever is the matter?'

'Nothing, Sister. I'm fine.' Jenny's head came up, but it was too dark to see her expression.

Julienne withdrew her hand. 'You were crying.'

Jenny stiffened before capitulating with a long sigh. 'Yes. I'm sorry; I hope I didn't disturb you?' There was real anxiety in the question.

'Of course not.' A pause. 'Can I help?'

Jenny's skirts rustled, as though she was shifting uneasily in her seat. 'Can you make me brave?'

The question was so unexpected that Sister Julienne blinked uncomprehendingly before she understood—or thought she did. 'Brave? Nurse Lee, you _are_ brave. How many young girls would choose to do what you do, little sleep, out in all weathers, riding alone where even the police do not dare walk—'

'That's not brave,' Jenny interrupted flatly. 'You do it too. We all do. Besides, that's easy.'

'I see.' Sister Julienne ruminated on what she knew of Jenny Lee. She was ashamed to realise it was very little; Cynthia often crept in for a chat, and even Trixie, bold impetuous Trixie, would drop down beside her—if they happened to be alone in the sitting room—with a gusty sigh that indicated she wanted to talk. Jenny never did, except in professional matters.

'There are many kinds of courage,' Julienne said now, feeling her way. 'Which do you lack?'

'The most important kind. The courage to love, to open myself properly to another person as Chummy did, or Sister Bernadette did—'

'Shelagh,' Sister Julienne interjected firmly, more for her own benefit than the girl's, if she was honest.

'Shelagh,' Jenny parroted obediently. 'She's the bravest of us all,' she continued despondently. 'She _chose_ to become a nun, and I can only imagine how much courage that takes'—unseen, Julienne smiled—'and then she _chose_ to give it up, give up the home and family she had with you here… She told us once her mother died when she was eight, only a kid, and she came here straight from training. She must've been younger than I am now.'

'She was,' Julienne confirmed, her heart clenching as she remembered Bernadette—Shelagh—as a painfully earnest novice, almost quivering with her desire to be a good nurse and a good nun.

The room was brightening by the minute, and Sister Julienne found she could suddenly see Jenny's features very clearly when the young woman turned to look at her.

'How did she do it?'

Julienne thought, wondering how best to answer the question. 'She knows herself very well,' she said at last. 'All nuns do; we must, we spend so much time in our own company that we'd be driven mad otherwise.' Jenny chuckled, briefly, and the nun was glad to have amused her, if only a little. 'Besides, we must also live our whole lives in a community that has been thrust upon us, if you like. You need self-awareness to live like that!'

'I see,' Jenny said, but her dubious tone showed that she didn't, not really.

Sister Julienne made another attempt.

'Shelagh knew—knows—her doubts, her demons, her strengths. She had the faith to give up the world—and the faith to realise when our path was no longer God's choice for her, and act on it instead of limping on, using her vows as a crutch. Our Order was not founded as a traditional religious order, did you know that? The intention was that no-one would be bound by lifelong vows. We did eventually choose to take them, but the history remains and so we're a little more… flexible than some orders if one of our members wishes to leave us. If a nun has deep, sincere doubts about her place with us, we won't stand in her way. As you know.'

'Trixie was surprised when Shelagh was married from here,' Jenny commented. 'She fully expected that she'd be driven from the house in sackcloth and ashes. She wailed about it for a full fifteen minutes before Cynthia pointed out that it wouldn't matter if she was, since no-one could expect a former nun to live in her former convent with her new husband.'

Julienne surprised herself by laughing, although the laugh was tinged by a hint of pain. How near, how very near, she had come to doing just that: 'before you leave', indeed! As if they did not need Shelagh as much they'd ever done, for with Chummy on maternity leave they were once again shorthanded. Yet it was impossible not to laugh; that touch of drama was so like their irrepressible Trixie.

'I'm not sure I like the idea of you girls discussing the community like that,' she said with mock severity, and Jenny had the grace to look somewhat abashed.

'It's only—' she began, but Julienne patted her hand.

'It's all right, Jenny. Just … don't let your love of gossip run away with you, understood?'

'Yes, Sister.' Jenny's head dropped forward, her curls gleaming. She looked very young, and a rush of protective feeling surged through the nun.

'We were talking about courage,' she said quietly. 'You are right that Shelagh has been brave, very brave. But you must remember, she's older than you are. She's had experiences you've never had—yet.' Julienne smiled to take the sting from her next words. 'In some ways, you are singularly innocent. Not as innocent as you were when you first walked through our front door, perhaps, but still—'

'I've had a love affair,' Jenny put in indignantly. 'I'm not _that_ innocent, Sister.'

'How old were you?'

It was a while before Jenny responded with a reluctant, 'Sixteen.'

'Little more than a child, for a girl of your class. Be honest with yourself. Was it truly a 'love affair' or a young girl's mad infatuation for man she could never have?'

It was bright enough for Julienne to see the tide of unforgiving crimson that washed over Jenny's pale skin. 'I'd never thought of it that way.'

'Is there truth in it?'

'Probably,' Jenny admitted. She gave a forlorn half-laugh. 'It hurts to say that. It makes me feel…such a fool. I thought I loved him. I thought I couldn't live without him.'

'Yet you have.'

'Yes.'

'What would you have sacrificed for him?'

'_Sacrificed_, Sister?' Jenny sounded startled.

'True love involves sacrifice,' Julienne told her soberly. 'Chummy's sacrificed what's left of her bond with her family. Shelagh's given up the home she had here. They've both sacrificed something more, something deeper: they've each given up their autonomy, their independence, their sense of oneness. Don't underestimate the difficulty of that, especially for Shelagh.'

Jenny's head was bowed, her fingers picking fretfully at a button on her yellow cardigan. 'I thought we could run away,' she said at last. 'I knew it would mean… being not respectable. Living in sin.' She cast a shy glance at Julienne, up through her eyelashes. 'You don't look shocked.'

'I've heard and seen worse,' Julienne assured her drily.

'I suppose you have.' The fingers returned to the button. 'I never thought. I didn't think of it as sacrifice. For him, giving up his home, his wife, his family. For me, to give up being respectable, to give up my family—'

'And your career. Had you thought of nursing then?'

Jenny shook her head, the curls flying. 'Oh no. Nursing was an escape. From _him_.'

Julienne was inwardly surprised at that. Jenny had always seemed so focused, so dedicated. 'What had you planned to do?'

The girl shrugged. 'Get married?'

'You could still marry,' the nun pointed out. 'You're very young.'

'That's the second time you've told me that,' Jenny said ruefully.

Sister Julienne laughed again, patting the the younger woman's hand. 'Have you been in love since?' she asked delicately.

'No. I thought I was, with Jimmy, but I see now I only thought I loved him when he stopped chasing me. I do love him, I've known him all my life, but I can't see myself living with him. I can't see myself married to him.' A pause. 'I couldn't see myself giving up my work for him.'

'You weren't prepared to make the sacrifice.'

'No. You must think me horribly selfish.'

'Not at all. It's the 1950s, Nurse Lee. You're a career woman. Great changes are coming—or so Sister Monica Joan assured me this morning before lunch, but as she has given me that same warning at least once a week for the past twenty years—'

Jenny grinned. 'I love Sister Monica Joan.'

'We all do. Even when we have to bite our lips and count to a hundred. However. My point is that the old ideas about what a woman must do and be are changing. You have a career of your own, a life of your own, and—most importantly—an income of your own. That makes you independent. If you choose to share you life with a man it must be because he's become such an essential part of you that you could not bear to give him up. That you cannot bear to be apart from him, that you are prepared to divulge your whole self and be entirely open to him. That you will do whatever it takes to stay with him. That's what love is.'

'That's why it scares me,' Jenny admitted.

'So it should!' Julienne told her. 'It _is_ frightening.'

'I don't want to get hurt again. I couldn't bear it.'

'Nonsense. Of course you could. That is simply the risk you must take.'

Jenny gave her that deer-like glance through her lashes. 'That's what Joe said. That to love was to lose. That loving meant opening yourself to great happiness—and terrible sorrow.'

Sister Julienne smiled. 'I told you he was an interesting man.'

'I'm glad you made me stick with it. I resented you for it, awfully, because… well, those _insects_!' Jenny shuddered at the memory. 'But now I don't think of the insects, or the dirt, or the smell. I just think of him.'

'With love.'

'Yes.' Jenny's head dipped.

'And he loved you too,' Julienne said. 'I went to see him, once, just after he was evicted from his rooms. He asked after you, his "maiden", and thanked me for sending you to him. "A grace to brighten an old man's last days", he called you. I meant to tell you and forgot. I'm sorry.'

Jenny was no longer trying to hide her tears, and Sister Julienne pulled the girl to her, resting her starched wimple against the young woman's springy curls. 'Don't doubt yourself,' the nun whispered. 'There is a time and a season for everything under heaven, and your time for love will come. And when it does, you _will_ be brave. Because love, real love, is inextricably linked to bravery. Remember Paul's words to the Corinthians: love always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres and _never_ fails.'

Jenny pulled back, wiping childishly at her eyes with the back of her hand. 'Thanks, Sister. That helps. I like that, that thing about love. That's from the Bible, isn't it?'

'I have a bookmark with that verse on it. I'll find it for you.'

'Oh, you don't have to do that—'

Julienne stopped her with a raised hand. 'I want to do it. While you are here you are in my charge, and not just professionally.' She watched as Jenny scrubbed at her eyes again, and reached into her habit's capacious pockets to withdraw a linen handkerchief. 'Here, dry your eyes with this. You'll irritate them if you keep rubbing them like that.'

The girl accepted the hanky with a sheepish smile. 'I know. That's what my mother says.' She mopped up and grimaced at it; the pristine square was blotched and crumpled. 'Oh bother, I've messed it up. I can't return it to you like this—'

'Keep it,' Sister Julienne told her, pushing herself to her feet. 'And Jenny?'

She looked up.

Sister Julienne smiled. 'If you want to talk again, you know where to find me. At any time—except perhaps in the middle of a delivery!' she added with a chuckle.

Jenny returned the smile as she stood in her own turn. 'I'll remember,' she promised. The sound of voices in the corridor beyond drew her eyes to the door.

The nun moved her head towards it. 'Go on. They'll be looking for you, doubtless dying to go over the events of last night in minute detail.'

Jenny moved forward in flurry of white and yellow, pausing only when her hand rested on the aged oak of the door. 'Thank you, Sister Julienne. For everything.'

She opened the door just wide enough to slip through it, and was gone. Sister Julienne sighed, the sound loud in the chapel. She too should depart; she had a full day of calls ahead and if she did not get something to eat Sister Evangelina would lecture her for the rest of the week. Yet something called her back, and she allowed her feet to move her towards the great centre window, the stained glass turned to rich gold and blue by the growing strength of the sun behind it.

'This will be difficult, Lord,' she murmured. 'We're two down and even the girls aren't indefatigable. With only Evangelina and myself to take the more complicated cases… and we're neither of us as young as we were.' Nun or not, it cost her something to make that admission, even if it was driven by professional pride rather than feminine vanity. 'I need your strength to be strong.'

She stood in perfect stillness for a time, bathing in the warmth that streamed through the gold glass. Finally the answer came in the very words she had given Jenny: _love always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails._

Sister Julienne smiled, squared her shoulders, and went to begin her day.

END.


End file.
